Tag Archives: Christopher Martin

Building the resilient supply chain

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Revised on: 2015-09-08

Following up last weeks post on a 2003 UK report on supply chain resilience, here is another “spin-off ” from the supply chain research done at Cranfield University: Building the resilient supply chain, written by Martin Christopher and Helen Peck in 2004. Since its inception this article has formed the bedrock for practically every literature review on supply chain resilience. Frankly, if you are investigating how to make supply chains more resilient, and if you forget to mention this article in your literature review, then I would say that obviously, you have absolutely no clue about supply chains or resilience.

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Supply Chain Turbulence

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Revised on: 2015-09-12

We are living in turbulent times. So are our supply chains. Nonetheless, the standard tenets of supply chain management prescribe that supply chains are most efficient when fully controlled from end to end, without any volatility or uncertainty. The basic idea is that variability is detrimental to performance as it causes cost in the form of stock-outs, poor capacity utilisation, and costly buffers. Really? Martin Christopher and Matthias Holweg disagree,  and that is why they wrote “Supply Chain 2.0”: managing supply chains in the era of turbulence.  This paper questions the established approach and argues that in the light of increasing turbulence a different approach to supply chain management is needed. What is needed is an approach that builds structural flexibility into the supply chain decision making. Only thus can we create the level of adaptability that is needed to remain competitive in the face of turbulence.

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Supply Chain Confidence

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Revised on: 2015-09-11

Did a 2001 white paper turn into a 2004 academic journal article just like that? In Mitigating supply chain risk through improved confidence, Martin Christopher and Hau Lee explore the impact confidence has on supply chain performance. Although difficult to precisely quantify, the confidence factor can have significant impact on inventory levels and operating costs, they say. Interestingly this 2004 article also appears as a 2001 white paper on supply chain confidence published by the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum. Is the journal article just a re-published white paper?

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Does product design impact supply chain risk?

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Revised on: 2015-09-03

Is it possible that supply chain risk is a result of unfortunate product design? Is it possible that supply chain risk does not only relate to the supply chain itself, but just as much to what is in the supply chain? What is in the supply chain is determined by a design process, and consequently, is it possible to design supply chain risk out of (or in to) the supply chain? In Khan, Christopher & Burnes (2008) The impact of product design on supply chain risk: a case study, that is the question that is sought answered.

 

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Risk Management: Contingent versus Mitigative

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Revised on: 2015-09-08

The risk management literature separates between mitigative actions or strategies and contingent actions or strategies. It is important to keep these two perspectives apart. Why? Because risk management needs to address both sides of the risk: what lies behind the risk (source) and what lies in front of it (consequences). Here is my attempt at defining these two terms and explaining the differences, at least the way I see it, based on Asbjørnslett (2008), Tomlin (2006) and Jüttner et al. (2003).

 

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Lean + Agile = LeAgile: a happy marriage?

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Revised on: 2015-09-11

Opposites attract and in the supply chain world, “lean” and “agile” appear to be opposites. Both management strategies have their advantages and disadvantages, and the question is, is it possible for them to exist side by side, or even fuse?  In their 2006 article A taxonomy for selecting global supply chain strategies, Christopher, Peck and Towill describe a fusion of Lean and Agile, termed LeAgile.

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Risk and Supply Chain Management – A Research Agenda

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Revised on: 2015-09-03

After a long break from reviewing actual supply chain risk literature, today I would like to return to the main thrust of this blog, namely supply chain risk. Today’s article, Risk and Supply Chain Management – Creating a Research Agenda, by Omera Khan, Bernard Burnes and Martin Christopher, was published in 2007 and provides and excellent, broad, and in-depth review of the literature on supply chain risk and locates this literature within the general literature on risk. The article concludes with the outline for a research agenda aimed at how supply chain risk can be fully understood and managed. Albeit exploratory and conceptual in its approach, the article provides valuable insights into the current literature.

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Supply Chain Risk – the forgotten discipline

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Revised on: 2015-09-03

No, it’s not that supply chain risk is a forgotten discipline, it’ is well and alive an kicking, it’s just that I forgot to write my post on the chapter on supply chain risk in Martin Christopher’s book, which I said I would do in my review of his book Logistics and Supply Chain Management. I remembered my promise while preparing my book chapter on Risks in Virtual Enterprise Networks, because I used Christopher when discussing those risks. Below are some of the highlights from the chapter on supply chain risk in Christopher’s book, and some personal reflections.

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A Future Research Agenda for Supply Chain Risk

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Revised on: 2015-09-08

When Manuj and Mentzer (2008) wrote their article titled Global Supply Chain Risk Management, they used Ghoshal (1987) Global Strategy: An Organizing Framework for developing sources of risk and Jüttner, Peck and Christopher (2003) Supply Chain Risk Management: Outlining an Agenda for Future Research for developing risk mitigation strategies. However, THAT is not why I am taking a closer look at the latter today. What brought said paper to my attention were the two simple figures it used. Why are the figures so striking?

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Why risk is the buzzword in supply chain management

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Revised on: 2011-03-08

A new field has emerged with the field of supply chain mangement. It’s called supply chain risk. What is supply chain risk? Today I will take a closer look at the chapter titled “Managing risk in the supply chain” in Logistics & Supply Chain Management by Christopher Martin, as reviewed in my previous post. A supply chain is often imagined as a streamlined flow from a supplier to a company, from where it flows effortlessly on to a customer. So much for the theory. In reality, the emergence of various supply chain management strategies and practices contribute to considerable chaos within these supply chains, and iIt is not surprising then that supply chains have become vulnerable, where even minor disruptions may result in chain-wide impacts across the whole supply chain. Along with supply chain risk, supply chain vulnerability is also and new and emerging field in the realm of supply chain management.

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Book Review: Logistics and Supply Chain Management

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Revised on: 2011-04-29

This book by Martin Christopher, Logistics & Supply Chain Management, is one of the better if not among the best books on supply chain management. Written by Professor Martin Christopher of the Cranfield School of Management, the book deals particularly with best practices in supply chain management in the current era of globalization. Responsiveness, reliability and relationships are the basis for successful logistics and supply chain management. Strategies like Just-In-Time (JIT), Lean and Agile thinking are reviewed, and last not least, there is a chapter on supply chain risk.
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Supply chains compete, not companies

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Revised on: 2015-10-02

“Supply chains compete, not companies” is the motto on Martin Christopher’s web site, www.martin-christopher.info. Martin Christopher is is Professor of Marketing and Logistics at Cranfield School of Management. His work in the field of logistics and supply chain management has gained international recognition. He has published widely and his recent books include Logistics and Supply Chain Management and Marketing Logistics.

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Is Your Supply Chain Vulnerable?

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Revised on: 2011-03-10

Recently I came across a report on Supply Chain Vulnerability published as early as 2002 by the Cranfield University School of Management on behalf of the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Home Office. The key findings from this research report into supply chain vulnerabilities are quite interesting.

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